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The winner of the Queen of Spring ranking is not a surprise this year. Demi Vollering dominated the spring from her second race day at Strade Bianche until the Vuelta, where she narrowly missed out on the victory due to unfortunate circumstances. 

Demi Vollering successively won the Strade Bianche (just ahead of her teammate Lotte Kopecky) and Dwars door Vlaanderen (solo), then finished second in the Tour of Flanders and the Brabantse Pijl. Afterward, the SD Worx rider became only the second woman ever, following Anna van der Breggen, to complete the Ardennes trilogy by winning the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. A phenomenal spring campaign! 

The battle for the eternal honor of being crowned the King of Spring 2023 in men's cycling was much more exciting this year. The leaderboard was initially led by Dylan van Baarle after the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but he passed the baton to his former teammate Tom Pidcock after Strade Bianche. From Milano-Sanremo onward, it was Mathieu van der Poel who took the lead. The Dutchman won after an attack on the Poggio and added second-place finishes in the E3 Saxo Classic and the Tour of Flanders to his list of achievements, concluding his spring campaign on a high note at Paris-Roubaix.

However, this year's trophy does not go to Van der Poel. Nor does it go to Wout van Aert, the winner of the past two editions. The Belgian rider from Jumbo-Visma had a consistent spring, never finishing lower than fourth place, but he couldn't win a monument for the third year in a row in the spring. Another rider with a very, very strong spring campaign is Christophe Laporte. Regarded as Wout van Aert’s first lieutenant in the cobbled classics the Frenchman was able to win two of the big spring classics himself in Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars door Vlaanderen.

Looking at the best teams in the spring classics season, we see that there was an exceptionally thrilling battle between Alpecin-Deceuninck and Jumbo-Visma this year. After all the one-day races in the Pro Series and the World Tour between the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Eschborn-Frankfurt, there are only 17 points separating the top two teams in the King of Spring Team ranking! Alpecin-Deceuninck scored slightly better with 2786 points, while Jumbo-Visma followed closely with 2769 points. In the Belgian team, Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen accounted for over 57% of the total points. For the Dutch team, Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte contributed slightly more than 55% of the total points. 

For the women's Spring Team Ranking, the battle was much less intense. Team SD Worx was the dominant force in all aspects during the spring and stood head and shoulders above the rest in one-day races. The Dutch team won a remarkable 12 one-day races that count towards the Queen of Spring Team Ranking. Trek-Segafredo, the second-place team in the ranking, won only 1 Queen of Spring-race during the same period.

BREAKTHROUGH OF SPRING 

The numbers above show some riders that took another step in their development as one day classic specialists. Jasper Philipsen was the rider with the highest points surplus compared to next year. The fast rider from Alpecin-Deceuninck topped his very strong spring campaign with a second place in Paris-Roubaix, behind teammate Mathieu van der Poel. 'De Vlam van Ham' also sprinted to victory at the Classic Brugge-De Panne and at the Scheldeprijs, both in Belgium.